Wolfram F. Hanrieder - Arms Control, the FRG, and the Future of East-West Relations

The political dimension of arms control has always had special significance for the Federal Republic of Germany, not only because of the issue of a divided Germany and a partitioned Europe but also because of the country's key position in the Western security alliance. In the wake of NATO's recent decision to deploy more nuclear weapons on German soil, and in the absence of progress on arms control, it has become clear that arms control measures and negotiations have assumed an importance far beyond their military-technical components; fundamental questions about the nature of East-West relations and the future shape of the transatlantic alliance and the European political order also have been raised. These essays explore the implications of arms control negotiations for the Federal Republic of Germany and consider why Germany has traditionally found it impossible to divorce considerations of arms control from their larger political context.

Wolfram E Hanrieder is professor of political science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is editor of Technology, Strategy, and Arms Control (Westview, 1985) and of Global Peace and Security: Trends and Challenges (Westview, 1987).

edited by
Wolfram F. Hanrieder

First published 1987 by Westview Press

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Arms control, the FRG, and the future of east-west
relations.
(Westview special studies in national security
and defense policy)
"Published in cooperation with the Institute
on Global Conflict and Cooperation, University of
California, San Diego"
Based on papers delivered at a conference held
at the University of California, Santa Barbara,
Nov. 21-22, 1985.
1. Nuclear arms controlGermany (West)Congresses.
I. Hanrieder, Wolfram F. II. University of California
Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation.
III. Series.
JX1974.7.A6745 1987 327.1'74'0943 87-6292

ISBN 13: 978-0-367-01377-6 (hbk)

The essays collected in this book are based on papers delivered at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), during a two-day conference, November 21-22, 1985. It is a pleasure to acknowledge the generous support the conference received from the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, the Lounsbery Foundation, and the Volkswagen Foundation.

The spirited discussions that these papers engendered during the conference seemed to indicate that the subject matterthe Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and arms controlwas timely as well as important and that it was charged with far-reaching political implications. Most conference participants were agreed that a consideration of the goals and consequences of arms control requires recognition and acceptance of the reality that arms control inevitably occurs in a political context, a context that either supports or inhibits the prospects for arms control. It is indeed essential to realize that the intentions that drive (or brake) arms control negotiations go beyond the avoidance of war, the stabilization of the military-strategic balance, or the more effective management of crisis situations, and derive their larger meaning from political purposesglobal, regional, and domestic. Arms control measures, even as they limit the instruments of war, are the continuation of politics by other means.

For the United States and the Soviet Union, as well as for their respective allies, arms control has always had fundamental implications for the nature of East-West relations, for the management of their security alliances, and hence for the shape of the global and European political order. The limits that define mutually acceptable arms control arrangements have always been at the same time the limits that define political accommodation. When these limits have proven insufficiently flexible, neither political purpose nor arms control could be realized.

The political dimensions of arms control have always had a special significance for the Federal Republic of Germany. Because of Germany's history, even the thought of a German finger on the nuclear trigger casts a shadow; and even the Germans' association with conventional arms remains vaguely threatening, although they themselves feel vaguely insecure. Although more than four decades have passed since most of Europe suffered at the hands of German military might, European sensitivities (both in the West and in the East) have remained sharp; and many Germans themselves demonstrate a commendable moral sensibility in their often uneasy relationship with military matters, conventional or nuclear.

The history of West German attitudes toward arms control is complex, as are the calculations, feelings, and aspirations that go into the Germans' reactions to the arms control issues of the 1980s. For historical, moral, psychological, and ultimately political reasons, German diplomacy in the 1950s and 1960s would have been more effective if the Bonn government had managed to develop a more constructive attitude toward arms control. But powerful obstacles stood in the way. Above all, the tortuous response of successive German governments to the East-West arms control proposals of the 1950s and 1960sdisengagement plans, the test ban treaty, the nonproliferation treatystemmed from misgivings over their repercussions on the issue of Germany's division and from the attempt, by and large unsuccessful, to exert a greater influence in the management of the transatlantic security pact and in its institutional arrangements in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). It wasn't until the 1970s, when Bonn's Ostpolitik became an essential part of East-West detentea process that was itself sustained by partial agreements on arms control and by the mutual readiness to legitimize the European status quothat the government of the FRG could approach arms control with a more constructive and less hesitant attitude.

In the 1980s, arms control was deprived of the supportive political base that the mutual East-West interest in solidifying the European status quo had provided in the early and mid-1970s and there was no easy or obvious answer to the question of which East-West issue of the 1980s would lend itself to playing a similar role. In the wake of NATO's decision to deploy more nuclear weapons on German soil, and in the absence of progress on arms control, the Germans arrived at the uneasy realization that the increased nuclear saturation of both German states tied them even closer to their superpower protectors and their respective views of the East-West contest; underlined the division of Europe and of Germany; and narrowed the range of East-West diplomacy. In the early and mid-1980s it became, once again, irrefutably clear that arms control measures, important as they may be in their own right, took on a meaning that went far beyond their military-technical import and raised fundamental questions about the nature of East-West relations and the future shape of the transatlantic alliance and the European political order. These are some of the issues that the essays collected here explore.